From siderea

[conuly]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnmZc8uoEbo

Much Ado About Nothing

Adapted by Joss Whedon.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. Among other things, I have to ask, does Joss understand the difference between the comedies and the tragedies? (Hint: fewer deaths, more happy marriages.)

Comments

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, Much Ado is a very bitter "comedy" anyway. One (possibly?) happy marriage, yes, and then one that's more practical than happy, one almost-death (including daddy saying that he'd rather have his precious little daughter dead than (supposedly) promiscuous), one dude sent off for torture, some lower-class bashing... yeah, I think Joss Whedon could give Much Ado the image it deserves. (Hint: Not Really Funny. And I say that as someone who adores Benedick and Beatrice.)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I've been waiting for this. I hope it makes it to cinemas near me.

Among other things, I have to ask, does Joss understand the difference between the comedies and the tragedies?

Broadly speaking, in the comedies everything is righted at the end and the right people end up with the right people. In the tragedies, everyone ends up dead. But up until the end you could be hard pressed to guess which you're actually heading for. (Twelfth Night could very easily be a tragedy if it didn't all turn round in Act 5, Comedy of Errors too. I don't know Much Ado well, but I know it's not the happiest of comedies, and Shrew is also pretty nasty. Midsummer Night's Dream could easily have ended in tragedy.)

So as long as he doesn't change the ending (which I assume he wouldn't dare to) I don't have a problem with however he might want to treat a comedy, because they're ultimately the same.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, writing this comment prompted me to go and tally how many Shakespeare plays I have/haven't seen. And I've only seen half the comedies (8/16), compared to 8/10 histories and 7/12 tragedies.

(For simplicity I've left the tragicomedies and problem in the broader categories. But for what it's worth they make a third of the ones I'm missing, having seen only A Winter's Tale and The Tempest aside. The former was a brilliant performance of what I expect to be a substandard play, the latter was a substandard performance of what I suspect to be a decent play.)